How to Lose Abdominal Fat
One of the most common questions asked to personal trainers is how to lose abdominal fat. Abdominal fat, also known as visceral fat, accumulates around the abdomen and serves an essential function: to protect the internal organs. However, an excess can be dangerous to our health, in addition to being an aesthetic problem for most. It is associated with metabolic disease, type 2 diabetes, and other serious health problems.
Causes of Abdominal Fat
Age, a sedentary lifestyle, stress, lack of sleep or poor diet are the main causes for abdominal fat to appear. To combat this, we need to:
- Take care of our diet with a diet to lose fat
- Exercise regularly
- Avoid having an excessively sedentary life as much as possible
- Rest for a minimum of 8 hours
- Try to manage stress and take life more calmly
The Myth of Localized Fat Loss
Although one of the most widespread beliefs is that doing localized exercises, in this case the abdominals, will help you lose all the fat in the abdomen, it is an erroneous belief. There is no scientific evidence to show that fat can be lost in a localized way. Weight loss is the effect that generates a caloric deficit derived from a reduction in calories ingested or an increase in calories spent throughout a day, or both.
Therefore, the correct way to approach the loss of abdominal fat is to carry out sufficient physical activity (or of sufficient intensity) to generate, together with a diet oriented to this objective, a change in body composition that allows us to maintain or increase our muscle mass and reduce or consume body fat reserves. This will ultimately resort to those located in the abdomen, since they are areas in which the human being, for physiological reasons, tends to accumulate more fat and use it or burn it in last place.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, there is no way to lose localized fat. We won’t burn our belly fat by focusing on doing a lot of core exercises. With exercise we will tone that area and, with nutrition, what we will do is to reduce body fat from the entire body, not just from a localized part.